Rita Dove Wishes the Reader

Rita Dove wishes the reader to garner a number of things from her poem concerning life and death. The two main points this paper will address is that Rita believes that life is short and that survivors immediately set about living the rest of their lives even after being clearly reminded of the close proximity of death. Secondly, the poet wishes the reader to see the progression of life, and that it is a natural happening.

The poet sets the tone of the poem by using the phrase 'lost milk tooth' in line eleven to portray just how fleeting life is, especially when surrounded by gravesites, presumably of young soldiers (since it is Memorial Day). With the blunt opening statement in line one telling the reader that it is indeed Memorial Day (1) the participants in the poem seem to be having a good time, yet earlier in the day had been soberly reminded of the fact that so many had sacrificed their lives in order to secure the freedom(s) enjoyed by those who are at the picnic. The poet tells the reader that the characters of the poem are enjoying a family picnic after the visit to the cemetery, by using the terms dad in line two and grandmother in line seventeen.

What is interesting is that the term 'dad' in line two is changed to 'father' in line twenty nine. This could have been done to contrast the dad the poet remembered while he was living, and the more serious and formal father that the poet remembers has died. It also could have been the poets way of displaying another manner of how participants proceed from life to death.

As young people growing up it is common to call dad 'dad', while growing older sometimes leads to the more formal salutation of 'father'. It is an interesting play on words.

Another play on the entire progression theme of the poem would be that the father was a fun loving kind of individual, the family at first thinking that non-one was really buried in the cemetery, at least the part of the cemetery they were inhabiting, the participants in the picnic remembered it as "a joke." (24) Another line that portrayed the dad as a happy go lucky type of guy was when the poet described him wearing the cap "his cap turned up, so the bib resembles a duck." (6-7) Yet at the end of the poem (26-28) the father is at last understood by the speaker.

An interesting insertion of a character was the diabetic grandmother in line seventeen. The reader can imagine the grandmother tottering on the porch, staring at the ensemble with a bitter type of anger and "a torch of pure refusal." (20) Was the reader to believe then that the grandmother was refusing to participate or was the grandmother characterized more as someone who wished to participate, but could not. The look of refusal then could have been meant as one that said "I'm trying to disdain that which I would really rather enjoy." The reader is meant to empathize with the situation and to smell the stink of oncoming death as compared to the living and the dead which had been visited earlier, presumably by all the family, excepting perhaps the diabetic grandmother, who sensed here own approaching and imminent passing on.

The rest of the adherents in the poem are enjoying the treat provided by father, even though the "recipe was secret" (5) while the grandmother is preparing for death. The poet states that the participant did not even remember the taste of the treat (25) which could have been an implication for the fact that the participant did not remember the grandmother. The evidence of this is found in line 16 when the poet ties "lavender" to both the grandmother and the treat.

In lines 8 and 9 it tells how the character in the poem 'galloped through the grassed-over mounds' which is another way of portraying death and how forgetful society can become of those who have already died. The reader is able to imagine how the grass has already overtaken the mounds where those who have fought so valiantly lay, and the fact that it has done so could be used as a comparison to society who, similar to the grass, also overtakes in an inexorable and ever encroaching fashion, those that have died.

On the other hand, in lines 11-14 the reader finds that father's treat is a lot like life itself, receiving a dollop of sweetness here, and a dollop of sweetness there. The reader can enjoy those dollops of life even more so in the type of setting provided by the poem's background which was very death oriented. This is in sharp contrast to the sweetness of life which the poet believes is enhanced because of the nearby dead and the nearby dying (the grass covered mounds and the grandmother).